Chatzy offers no-frills, easy to use private chat rooms with no sign-up required! Fill out the simple start-up form with your name, chat title, message, and participant's emails. Participants instantly receive an email with your message and a direct link to the room. Room administrator options include allowing or turning off emoticons, images, and videos. The Save/Print options allow administrators to keep a record of any conversations. There is a setting to use Chatzy on mobile devices with smaller screens, as well. Note: Some school networks block all chat tools, so check in advance whether you can access it if you plan to use this tool at school.

In the Classroom

Use this site to connect to other classes to open up discussion between your students in one convenient place. Safety is not a concern with this site, since only those with an email invitation/link can participate in a chat. (Your students need not have email. You can simply email the link to yourself and share it with students to enter into their browsers.) Teach good digital citizenship of chat etiquette while using this activity to learn. Connect with other classes to learn about other locations, learn various perspectives, find animals that are similar yet different, learn about the different books others are reading, or survey students on various economic, political, or environmental topics. Be sure to plan content ahead of time, so students have the opportunity to think through the material and formulate a response. Discuss appropriate ways to communicate to others prior to connecting with another classroom. Use Chatzy as a place for students to brainstorm and share ideas about a topic. Use as a simple help forum for students to ask questions of each other and of you. Share a chat room with parents once a month for a question and answer session at a scheduled time.

Use backchannel chat on laptops during a video or student presentations. Pose questions for all to answer/discuss in the backchannel, or ask students to pose their own "I wonder if..." questions as they watch and listen. Keep every student engaged and THINKING as an active listener. The first time you use backchannel, you will want to establish some etiquette and accountability rules. The advantage of backchannel chat is that every student has a voice, no matter how shy. Use this in world language classes, ESL/ELL classes, or autistic support classes for backchannel chat. Challenge students to use their new language skills by acting out a scene from a video or describing the feelings of the actors. When studying literature, collaborate with another class to have students role-play a chat between two characters. In a history class, create fictional conversations between soldiers on two sides of the Civil War or different sides of the Scopes Monkey trial.

This recording of an OK2Ask online professional development session from September 2014, opens in Adobe Connect. Learn how to adapt your teaching for your students' special needs using TeachersFirst resources. Participants will view and explore tools to help students needing emotional support, learning support, speech/language support, autistic support, ESL assistance, and more. Find resources that promote organization, focus, and differentiated learning. Use exploration time to discover and discuss how selected resources can be utilized in your classroom. This session is for teachers at ALL technology comfort levels.

As a result of this session and through individual follow-up, teachers will: Gather ideas by exploring at least 10 specialized resources on TeachersFirst. Explore and practice with selected resources. Investigate and discuss lesson ideas offered in reviews and by other participants. List and discuss other curriculum related projects or activities that could be done using the resources in the teacher's own teaching situation. (Follow-up) Implement one of the provided resources into an upcoming teaching unit or lesson. Applicable ISTE-T standards (2008)*: 1a, b, c; 2a, b, c, d; 3b, c, d; 4c. ISTE's standards page.

In the Classroom

Find new strategies and techniques to use for the special needs in your classroom. Explore various tools for language skills, focus, organization, differentiation, and more. Share some of your favorite sites with families on your class wiki or website. Take a look at the resource page full of GREAT ideas! Learn more about OK2Ask and upcoming sessions here.

Manage and track behavior with LiveSchool's behavior point system. Free accounts allow up to five users to award points, leave and view comments, and withdraw points for "purchases" from any device. Print weekly reports for parents with day by day records of points earned or lost, comments with teachers' names, behaviors observed, and cumulative totals of points earned.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Consider using this program to reward a group of the week. Award points for positive behaviors such as participating, creating, working hard, and helping others. Using LiveSchool for group behaviors will give immediate feedback to groups when projected on your whiteboard or your projector. Use this tool to help less focused students stay on task. Share this site with students on the first day of school as you go over class expectations and your behavior plan for your classroom. Use LiveSchool to offer both negative and positive feedback to parents and students.

Use LiveSchool to privately keep track of learning or emotional support student behaviors and send a report to their special education teachers and/or parents. This tool could be invaluable to the life skills, autistic support, gifted, or emotional support teacher who needs to track the behavior of each of the students as part of an IEP, GIEP, or behavior plan. Alternative Ed. programs may find this tool very useful, even up through high school.

My Autism Team is a social networking site for parents of autistic children. The site includes four key areas: finding providers, finding and networking with other parents of autistic children, questions and answers, and activities -- with daily updates of triumphs and trials. Register using your email to access most information on the site; however, it is possible to search and browse the question and answers and find local providers without registration. This is NOT a medical or "professional" site, though they do have partnerships with several respected professional autism-related groups (see Partners section).

In the Classroom

If you have an autism spectrum chid in class, use information and resources on My Autism Team to understand parental concerns and make parent-teacher conferences and communications more effective. Share this site with parents of autistic children as a resource for networking with other parents. Be sure to share this with partner teachers including Special Education teachers. Browse the Question and Answer portion of the site to become familiar with concerns families of autistic children have when working with school systems and IEPs. Help diffuse the feeling of "them and us" by reading what parents say and talking about how you can work together.

Join forces with Super Power Speech, a blog written by a speech pathologist, Caroline Bowen. Find professional speech pathology information such as Articulation Printables links, Social Skills, Language based speech therapy, many engaging blog entries, and links to helpful speech resources by clicking on Speech on the top menu bar. Explore resources for Assessment and Response to Intervention. Some material featured on the site goes to Teachers Pay Teachers, but some are free.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Whether you are a speech pathologist, social skills/autistic support teacher, or a classroom teacher, find extra resources here to help children with speech and language needs. Also read the discussions to help build social skills or even to improve literacy. Read through past blog entries. Brush up on the latest to be sure you are current! You may also find some specific ideas to share with these students' parents at conferences so you can work together in supporting their child. Primary grade regular ed teachers will find vocabulary development activities appropriate for any student, not just those who are identified.

Create your own novelty tickets. Choose from two different ticket styles and enter information such as row and seat numbers, event title and place, and date of the event. After entering information, click "Make My Ticket!" to view and save your ticket in JPEG format.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Ask your students to use the Fake Ticket Generator to create excitement for class presentations. Have them create tickets and hand them out to other students to use to be admitted to class for their presentation. Create tickets to hand out to students at the beginning of any unit to create interest and excitement. Make tickets to give to parents as invitation to Meet the Teacher night, Science and Book Fairs, PTO meetings, and more. Create tickets that students can earn, such as a ticket to skip a homework assignment or to have extra time at centers. Give out tickets to special events in the library/media center, such as Dress as Your Favorite Author Day. Have students create tickets to a classroom museum or science fair. Use tickets as a behavior incentive.

Comments

I sent ticket invitations to students the week before the Pixar Short Films Plot Study to make sure they came to school (some of my SpEd kids have attendance issues) and were on time. 6thKay, NM, Grades: 6 - 8

TeachingEnglish provides free classroom materials, lesson plans, and activities for teaching English from primary ages through adults. Explore free teacher professional development and training materials in addition to articles on the facets of teaching. Any group, whether ESL/ELL or not, can use the lessons and some of the interesting activities they have for learning vocabulary and engaging in conversation. At the bottom of the home page find a huge directory categorized by Teaching Resources, Tools for Teachers, Teacher Development, Teacher Training, Specialist areas, and more. Since the site is from the UK, the vocabulary and spelling used is British.

In the Classroom

You may want to complete some of the selections with a projector or your interactive whiteboard for the whole class. You could also differentiate by having small groups of students working on various activities at their individual independent levels. Make a shortcut to the activity on your classroom computer. Share a link to this resource on your class website or blog.

Highlight and print (or view) only what you want from a web page using Printliminator. Drag the bookmarklet to your browser's toolbar. (Printliminator works with Chrome ONLY.) Then click the bookmarklet from any page to open up tool options. Mouse over your web page and click on red boxes to remove them from the page. When ready, preview and send to your printer. Be sure to watch the Quick Video Demo for a full overview of all features of the Printliminator.

In the Classroom

Install the Printliminator on your browser tool bar. Show students how to use Prinliminator on your interactive whiteboard or projector for use when they are researching or preparing a study guide for a test. Use when viewing web pages on your interactive whiteboard to eliminate unnecessary information. Delete unnecessary information from webpages. Send to print and save as PDF for use with student handouts or links from your class web page. Of course, you will want to include your SOURCE on the handouts as a model of good digital citizenship. This is also a great tool to differentiate for any student. Use this tool to share handouts or PDFs with students who are easily distracted to help them stay focused on what matters.

Find Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports for problem classroom behaviors at PBIS World. This complete and easy to use resource includes hundreds of interventions, resources, and data collection and tracking tools. There are discussions about behavior, behavior analysis, problem-solving, ideas, and more! Start by selecting the behavior you want to address and proceed through the steps to the interventions and directions for using them. Some of the topics tackled include Anxiety, Disorganized, Poor Coping Skills, Lack of Participation, and many others. Explore ways to help students (or even adults) cope with these issues. There are three tiers to the program with different types of interventions.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Think of an undesirable behavior in your classroom, and you will probably find it on the PBIS list. Read a description of the behavior (just to make sure you chose the correct one). Then go on to the interventions. Click to see how and when to use each intervention. Choose from many interventions for each behavior. Use the different forms to keep track of the success (or lack of success) of the intervention over the weeks and months you try it. If the Tier One interventions do not work, proceed to tier two. Share this resource with colleagues and parents to team up for success.

Learn what you need to do and know to start using Twitter. Sign up to get a Twitter mentor or BE a mentor! Find out what to do before creating a Twitter account, get advice about whom to follow, explore programs to use to help you manage your Twitter account, and read how to keep track of everything. Learn about all the terms needed to be successful using Twitter as a teacher. This site is clean, simple, and very helpful!

In the Classroom

After creating an account, look at the page for what else you can start doing. Find other educators to follow on the Before You Begin page, and also look at participating in a Twitter Chat. Find a list of chats to join, and the day and time they meet at Twitter - Education Chats.As a teaching tool, Twitter is amazing! If your school permits access, have a class account for your class to follow people who work in fields and topics you study. Even primary grades can connect with other classes or "follow" many learning experiences via Twitter. Learn much more about teaching ideas and tools for Twitter in the many resources listed on TeachersFirst Twitter for Teachers page.

Practice antonyms, synonyms, and homonyms with the word eating frog. Simply click to match the correct answer. Practice your speed and accuracy. Your final score will be shared at the end. This site is ideal for beginner readers, but you must be able to read basic sight words. Students learning what antonyms, synonyms, and homonyms mean will also find valuable practice at this site.

In the Classroom

In the classroom, introduce, practice, or reinforce concepts of antonyms, synonyms, and homonyms on your interactive whiteboard. If you teach kindergarten, you may want to make this site a class activity so even the non-readers can easily participate. With younger students, pair up stronger readers with a weaker reader to complete the activities on the site. Offer this interactive to students during centers or for home use. This site is ideal for ESL/ELL learners to deepen their comprehension of the English language.

Create and personalize a music playlist using Musicovery. Hover your mouse over different areas of the mood pad to define your radio settings of energetic, dark, positive, or calm. Narrow choices by different genres such as pop, soundtracks, world music, and more. A song list starts playing once you selected the mood. Create an account to save favorites for use later.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Be sure to share this link with students and parents looking for less distracting sounds while brainstorming or working. Note that songs with words will probably distract, so you may want to stick to classical or other instrumental options. Reading a book to the class or conducting a science lab? Turn up your speakers and use calming sounds as mood music to set the stage for your story. Play a few minutes of relaxing sounds before a major test. Let a student "DJ" choose a class relaxation or creativity soundscape. If you have "silent reading" time in your class or school, calm music will help students to focus. As you talk with students about discovering their learning styles, offer this site as a suggestion for them to try while prewriting or studying for tests. Emotional support and autistic support teachers may want to experiment to see if these sounds can help their students.

Try your hand at spelling practice using Spelling Wizard. Enter words into the blanks and then choose to make a word search or word scramble. You can do the spelling activities online or click to print.

In the Classroom

In your classroom, introduce Spelling Wizard on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Share your weekly spelling words as a class or in small groups. Make this a regular part of your word study centers featuring each week's words. If you do the "Daily 5," use this as one of your centers. Share this link on your class wiki or website for students to practice at home. This tool is also handy for practicing correct spellings of states and capitals, science terms, and more. It would even work for learning to spell the names of classmates at the beginning of the school year.

LitPick is a great place to find preteen and teen literature reviewed by students from all over the world. Discover the latest reads reviewed by students. Students apply to become a reviewer, along with an adult sponsor, and get a free eBook or print book. Choose a book by age or genre. Read within 4-6 weeks and write a 5-10 sentence review summarizing the book, without giving away the ending. Submit and receive feedback before the final review is approved and published. Receive points and badges for well written reviews. Find books listed by author, genre, or age group. Adult members of LitPick can participate in the monthly book giveaway contest and newsletter that features student book reviews and special offers. Sign up to receive the latest announcement and promotional giveaways. Start book clubs, or use in classes. LitPick was selected as Best Website for Teaching and Learning by the American Association of School Librarians, and selected for the Gold Award from Mom's Choice and the Association of Independent Authors. LitPick also hosts a video review channel titled BookTube residing on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable. You could always view them at home and bring them to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as Freemake Video Converter, reviewed here, to download the videos from YouTube.

In the Classroom

Use this site for a real reviewer's experience or simply to find great books. Evaluate other reviews and make a list of noteworthy reviewing techniques. Students choose the latest new reads before they are released to the public. Sign up individual students, groups or students, or your class to read a book together and write a review. Challenge your gifted ones to work on this authentic review task. This site is perfect to use for literature circles. Create your own "LitPick" on your school library site. Have students involve parents as their sponsor for greater parental involvement and excitement. Get the newest books free.

Any.do is an online to-do list to manage daily tasks across all devices. Create your account and start adding things you need to do. Choose from today, tomorrow, upcoming, or someday in the Time View format. Click the folder icon to sort lists into work, personal, or a folder you name. Choices include adding a time for tasks, options for reoccurrence, and an alarm reminder. Download the Any.do app to sync tasks seamlessly across any iOs or Android device and your computer.

In the Classroom

Any student might appreciate having an online time management account, but learning support students and disorganized gifted students need one. You may want to model using this online tool to help middle and high school students learn personal organization. Share this site the first week of school to get students started on the right foot! Make a demo account for a mythical student and organize his/her daily schedule together so students can see how it works. Share the steps on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Alternatively, this idea will work with group projects where students need to learn to manage their project time.

Easily track time spent on projects without time sheets! Enter your task and click to begin tracking. View the day-by-day breakdown of time spent on the activities. Generate summary, detailed, or weekly reports. Use this tool to create teams and generate team reports. Invite members by email and mark team data as public or private as needed. Use multiple machines in the day? No problem. Time is tracked across multiple devices including Android and iOs.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Introduce this tool to students as you talk about study skills and homework habits at the start of the school year. Make it part of your lessons on "how to study" or part of your first long term project, especially with disorganized middle schoolers (and gifted students). Have students track how they are spending their time outside of school and make resolutions about how they can adjust it to improve grades, etc. Even teachers need to track time spent on activities. Record time spent in preparing lessons, collaborating, maintaining your PLN, communicating with parents, extra-curricular activities, and more. This tool is beneficial with student groups and tracking time spent on activities. Be sure that students break down the specific responsibilities needed for the project and separate them out to the group. Students can show the work they completed as well as the summary report of time spent. Students can use this information as self-reflection upon completion of any class project and see the possible impact of time well spent!

e-learning for kids' is a collection of five interactives for elementary students to learn different types of communication skills. The lessons cover a range of topics including the difference between verbal and non-verbal communication, and the skills for being successful at both. Learn about shyness and assertiveness, public speaking, conflict, types of communication, and general communication skills. Choose any lesson to begin and follow the prompts to complete the activity.

In the Classroom

e-learning for kids is the ideal place to start a unit on communication. Use the overview about communication as a mini-lesson on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Create a link to lessons for students to complete on classroom computers. Students learn through practice and discussion of real and imaginary situations. These lessons may also be useful for autistic support, emotional support, or counselor discussion groups. Use the ideas for activities at Out On a Limb, reviewed here. Be sure to provide a link to both sites on the class webpage or newsletter for students to use at home.

Front Row is a Common Core-aligned program with resources for Math, ELA, and Social Studies for K-8 that adapts to individual student skills. Front Row has over 30,000 math questions matched to all math standards and more than 500 ELA articles that often cover social studies and science standards as well as all ELA standards. There are five reading levels offered for each article. Sign up to create a class account and add student information. Students login in through an iPad app or with the online web version and the class code. Students complete a diagnostic pre-test and then begin working at their individual level. Awards of coins for completion of levels promote student engagement and enjoyment of the program. Front Row also promotes student collaboration through their inquiry-based, cross-curricular lessons. Other features include a scratch pad for working through problems, virtual manipulatives, and individualized printables for practice. Receive detailed analytics and student reports on your Front Row dashboard. You may encounter a warning about how Front Row may not work on your browser and to use the Chrome app. For this reviewer Mozilla FireFox and Microsoft Edge seemed to work fine for a student pre-test and the teacher dashboard.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

After creating your classroom account and adding rosters, introduce this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector. If you are lucky enough to have a class set of mobile devices, allow students to use Front Row while you work directly with individuals or small groups of students. Front Row is a great way to supplement instruction for both gifted and special needs students. Visit the FAQ section for ideas for implementing Front Row in your math, ELA, social studies, or science classroom. Be sure to share login information with parents for student practice at home.

The Global Read Aloud offers you a chance to share a book with other students from around the world. This program is in its fourth year and has had over 200,000 participants. The Global Read Aloud is a six-week event that ends in November. Announcement of the book list and the author study selections occur each spring. Student involvement starts in the fall each year. Teachers, parents, and individual students are invited to join. Choose a book to read and sign up at the very beginning of each October. There is a Google form on the main page for registration. On this main page, you will find several suggested ways to participate: The Global Read Aloud wiki, Edmodo, reviewed here, Kidblog, reviewed here, and several others. Also, find a list of teachers who have already started connecting and their Edmodo links.

In the Classroom

Start looking at The Global Read Aloud program before the school year starts. The author study can be useful for students who have difficulty reading chapter books. There are also pictures books available for younger students. Choose the book early, or get your students involved once school starts. Have students vote for the book they want to read by using a program like Wejit, reviewed here. WeJit allows students to write why they want to read that book. As you are reading the book, you may want to have small groups research and investigate the setting, author, inferences, references, and allusions to other books, history, and places. Book Drum, reviewed here, is a good example with ideas for "profiling" a book. Researching and presenting their findings will help students with deep reading experience required by the Common Core Standards. Have students create a class wiki modeled after Book Drum. To learn more about using wikis in your classroom, check out the TeachersFirst Wiki Walk-Through.

Obtain and send signatures on documents with HelloSign. This service allows you to email documents and receive legally binding signatures through email and other services. The free service permits three per month. HelloSign also syncs with DropBox, Box, Evernote, and SkyDrive. Sign up using your email or Google account then follow steps on the Getting Started link. Upload documents from your computer or allowed services to edit and sign, add a message and recipients then send. Send up to three free documents per month with a free account. There is the option for a 30-day free trial period of some of the premium features, however, this review is only for the "always" free features.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Use HelloSign to obtain parent signatures on IEP's, behavior notices, and more when parents are unable to physically sign documents. Have administrators send evaluation documents for teacher signatures electronically. Use anytime a signature is required without having to mail documents or have the signer present. You will, of course, want to be sure that a "clever" student is not doing the signing for his or her parents! Make sure to verify email addresses through a phone call or other means.